Sidebar Sidebar
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.

External RAID

G

ginopiazza49

macrumors member
Original poster
Jan 12, 2004
44
0
Port Chester, NY
I have a PowerMac G4 500 (Sawtooth). I am looking for an RAID unit. I would like the RAID unit to be external. Do I need a PCI card for the RAID unit? What software do I need to set up the RAID, if any, or will Mac OS X recognize it immediately? Anything else you can tell me that I did not think to ask will be appreciated.
 
ginopiazza49 said:
I have a PowerMac G4 500 (Sawtooth). I am looking for an RAID unit. I would like the RAID unit to be external. Do I need a PCI card for the RAID unit? What software do I need to set up the RAID, if any, or will Mac OS X recognize it immediately? Anything else you can tell me that I did not think to ask will be appreciated.
Click to expand...

If you want a more complete/user-friendly RAID Software package try SoftRAID. There's a trial version of it available to test. It's at:

http://www.softRAID.com/

It is very flexible if you want to attach FW drives/USB 2.0 drives/ SMART drives (like those found here: http://www.granitedigital.com/catalog/pg33_firewireidehotswapjbodraid_.htm

As someone else mentioned AppleRAID works as well. Here's a sheet of the differences:

http://www.softRAID.com/vsapple.html

Hope that helps a bit~
 
You can buy various PCI SATA cards that can have external SATA plugs, and a way to route the molex eternally. So you'd still have internal hard drives, but they could be sitting outside of the machine, if you're in to that sort of thing.
 
Couple of options

accusys makes a variety of internal and external RAID devices that can be connected via FireWire, USB, or SATA.

These are hardware based RAIDs, for no particular OS or software is needed. They come in RAID 0, 1, and 5 configurations, so depending what your pocketbook allows, you can choose.

If you want something a bit cheaper, you can get RAID5 software from FWB, or use the RAID 0 or RAID 1 features in OSX. These all will cause a minor to major performance hit on your CPU depending on what processor you use.

Finally, if you are looking just for cases ( SATA / USB / FireWire ), I have had particularly good luck with cases from bytecc .

These have been pretty reliable, and stack well. Pricewatch.com caries the FW versions for about $45.

I hope this helps,

Max.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Register on MacRumors! This sidebar will go away, and you'll see fewer ads.
Top Bottom
Back